Its
plain to see
that I'm currently getting nowhere with my approach to
regular and animation job hunting. I partly DONT want a regular job
(dont tell the taxman!) because frankly another 3 years in a hell hole
pub doesnt interest me anymore. For the sake of Canada did I only stick
it out as long as I did but now things have changed substantially in my
thinking.
I
believe, in some wierd way, that my desire for a serious go at
obtaining an animation career has somehow deterred me from getting a
regular job at say a coffee house or a bar. I think this lack of
enthusiasm for such a hum-drum life has shown or is evident in my
applications and it seems at this moment in time Im incapable of
employment...in ANY field of work. So is it my attitude or is there a
part of me thats saying 'Hey you! Stop being a dick to me and go out and
get what I and you want for fek's sake!' Yeh, that girl screams out
alot of profanity but she has a really big point.
Four
freelance, yet UNPAID, jobs later and Im still no closer to that Studio
job. I took these jobs for nothing other than to better myself (which is
worth it just for that I suppose) but ultimately to get some experience working
for clients to eventually succeed in getting a permanent job at a production house.
Ive even gone as far as Vancouver in Canada to try my luck out there
although thats a different story with a not so good ending so you can
see my run of bad luck.
Whats made me write this today is after seeing this, lead by a former lecturer at my University:
I
nearly wrote a response to this video on what I thought about CP's opinions on animation education
at UWN, but after 4 paragraphs I decided to stop being bitter. Ive been
bitter about University for too long and possibly focussed on the things
that went wrong rather than reading between the lines of what I gained
from the experience. My next and first move closer to that Studio job
was to seek help from a former favourite lecturer. I explained my
predicament, what I was doing to gain work and asked what IT IS that I
may be missing, under-selling, any particular content I was lacking in
etc so I would be more employable to a studio. Then I started to look
through bookmarks of websites of studios Id like to work at and
remembered, from the BAF panel what the DNeg manager said that they
werent looking for 'creativity' but more a 'technical' showreel. This
says to me then that its a studio's choice what they look for in a
candidate. That you have to KNOW certain things about that particualr
production house and know if theyre looking for someone who is all
technical with 0 personality/ creativity and just knows what buttons to
press, or the houses that look for creativity as well as tech or both of
those things as stand alones. I regularly scour sites and try and get a
feel for what they look for in an employee but their websites, lest we
forget, are more about THEM projecting themselves as a business and you
rarely find that personal touch which gives away any indication as to
what they are like and what they look for.
My
next step then is to look at the studio's showreels and SEE what work
they produce and feel the direction of their style/styles and see if I
fit in with that at all.
Here are some example reels of houses Id love to work for:
I could describe the 2D content in the 1st few seconds as:
#Stylized
#Composited #Texturised #Bold #Graphic animation #UPA #MotionGraphics
#Colourdriven #Simplistic #Aesthetically #Appealing#Commercial
Theyd
probably use programs such as AFX, Premier and Flash maybe Illustrator
and definitely plenty of Photoshop to get the textured finishes and the
smooth key to key/ tweened animation theyve produced on this reel.
Do I have evidence of any of this in my reel:
Lets be honest, NO.
Next Studio:
I could describe the 3D and varied 2D as:
#Modelsheets
#Motiongraphics based #Cutout #Clean #Cartoony #Experimental
#Interactive (elements of 3D/Live action composited into scenes)
#3Dspaces #2Drealism #Varied #Styles #Commercial #Educational
Do I have evidence of any of this in my reel/work:
Caroony YES, Modelsheets YES, everything else:
NO
These
are studios of whos work I admire. Ive recently been getting into the
styised UPA simplicity and love seeing animated content that pulls off
minimal movements using AFX with gorgeous design and colour concepts
which you can fully realise, in detail using
Photoshop. As youve seen in my recent doodles, Im attempting to execute a
similar style of my own and create either a character performance or
scene in order to better my AFX skills and get me re-aquainted with
animating in this way.
ON THE FLIPSIDE
We have studios in Canada who produce work like this:
Alot of there work is produced using ToonBoom Studio, which seems to be standard (yey!) overseas. Their style and animation is:
#Stylised
#Cartoony #Colourful #Fullyanimated #AlittleLimitedAnimtion #Toonboom
#Inked #Texturised #Children'sentertainment #Educational
Do I have evidence of this in my showreel and work:
Fully
Animated YES, A little Limited Animation YES, Toonboom PLENTY, Inked
YES, Colourful YES, Cartoony YES. The rest, obviously not. But with this
studio what I dont have is Canadian landed status and Im not living in
Vancouver anymore. Had I tried a little harder or not given in when I
did I may have at least been able to land an interview with the studio
as it was only in Downtown, 10miles from my digs> <
What Im
trying to outline in this post are things that Im lacking in my
showreel that makes these studios toss my digital applications on the
animated pixel fire and not consider me as an employable candidate. Its
not simply going to take me moving to another part of the country or a
different country for that matter, its going to have to come from
content and me believing a bit more that I CAN do this and realising
that for me, there is no Plan B.
Colour is not my favourite 
Here are some title cards Ive based loosley around this image:
